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ABSTRACT
One of the central characteristics of current Middle Eastern politics is the weakness of class-based political organizations. While structural explanations of this pattern abound, hegemonic struggles of Islamists to erode the class cleavage have so far been largely overlooked. In order to bring this perspective into the literature, this article studies discourses, affects and policies promoted by the Islamic trade unions confederation of Turkey, Hak-İş. After the introduction, I first demonstrate that the identity of Hak-İş has consistently been based on a fantasy of social cohesion and aversion to class-based politics. Building on this, I detail how Hak-İş has developed new economic and political practices, in a deliberate effort to overcome class-based unionism. Finally, I argue that the role of Hak-İş has evolved into representing workers' interests within the framework of the corporatist regime built by pro-Islamic AKP government.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Yüksel Sezgin for his careful reading of an early version of this article and for his very helpful comments. I also owe thanks to Osman Yıldız, general secretary of Hak-İş, who generously allowed me to conduct research in Hak-İş archives, and who spent some of his valuable time to introduce Hak-İş to me. Needless to say, all error is mine.
Disclosure statement
There is no potential conflict of interest in this research and article.
Notes
1. J. Beinin, Workers and Peasants in the Modern Middle East (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p.165.
2. T. Masoud, Counting Islam: Religion, Class and Elections in Egypt (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014), p.4.
3. Ibid., p.2.
4. With regards to the Palestinian polity, for example, Challand details how conservative and religious organizations have gained the upper hand at the expense of secular organizations in the recent period. See, B. Challand, ‘A Nahda of Charitable Organizations? Health Service Provision and the Politics of Aid in Palestine’, International Journal of Middle East Studies Vol.40, No.2 (May, 2008), pp.227–47. For a general evaluation of the Islamist dominance in welfare provision, see M. Cammett and P. J. Luong, ‘Is There an Islamist Political Advantage?’, Annual Review of Political Science Vol.17 (2014), pp.187–206.
5. A. Kublitz, ‘From Revolutionaries to Muslims: Liminal Becomings Across Palestinian Generations in Denmark’, International Journal of Middle East Studies Vol.48 (2016), pp.67–86.
6. Beinin, Workers and Peasants, p.140.
7. Masoud, Counting Islam, p.5; M. Tessler, ‘The Origins of Popular Support for Islamic Movements: A Political Economy Analysis in Islam’, in Democracy and the State in North Africa edited by J. P. Entels (Bloomington, IN, and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1997), pp.93–126.
8. Challand, A Nahda of Charitable Organizations. See also, Cammett and Luong, Is There an Islamist Political Advantage?, p.197.
9. C. Tuğal, ‘Transforming Everyday Life: Islamism and Social Movement Theory’, Theory and Society Vol.38 (2009), pp.423–58.
10. To be precise, I do not claim that there is only one way in which Islamists have engaged with the class cleavage. Even Islamist movements in the case of Turkey have shown great variety in their economic ideas; see C. Tuğal, ‘Islamism in Turkey: Beyond Instrument and Meaning’, Economy and Society Vol.31, No.1 (2002), pp.85–111. Still, I believe that studying the perspective of the largest Islamist trade unions confederation can give us a very valuable comparative insight.
11. Beinin, Workers and Peasants, p.158; C. Alexander, ‘Opportunities, Organizations, and Ideas: Islamists and Workers in Tunisia and Algeria’, International Journal of Middle East Studies Vol.32 (2000), pp.465–90.
12. E. Aydoğanoğlu, Relations Between Politics and Trade Unions in Turkey and World [in Turkish] (Ankara: Kültür Sanat-Sen, 2011), p.69; Y. Koç, In 100 Questions Workers Movement and Trade Unions in Turkey [in Turkish] (İstanbul: Gerçek Yayınevi, 1998), p.7.
13. Y. Koç, ‘Nationalist Workers Trade Unions Confederation, MİSK’ [in Turkish], Kebikeç Vol.5 (1997), pp.207–19.
14. For a review of the labour regime during the AKP period, see A. Çelik, ‘Turkey's New Labour Regime Under the Justice and Development Party in the First Decade of the Twenty-First Century: Authoritarian Flexibilization’, Middle Eastern Studies Vol.51, No.4 (2015), pp.618–35.
15. This may either be a result of the ‘elitist’ bias of social research or a common assumption about the decreasing power of labour worldwide and in Turkey. There is now a quite developed literature on Islamist business associations. An early example of this literature is Ayşe Buğra's work comparing the Islamic business association MÜSİAD to the secular one TUSIAD. See A. Buğra, ‘Class, Culture, and State: An Analysis of Interest Representation by Two Turkish Business Associations’, International Journal of Middle East Studies Vol.30 (1998), pp.521–39. Some other Islamic business associations that have been studied are TUSKON and İGİAD. See Ö. Madi, ‘From Islamic Radicalism to Islamic Capitalism: The Promises and Predicaments of Turkish-Islamic Entrepreneurship in a Capitalist System (The Case of İGİAD)’, Middle Eastern Studies Vol.50, No.1 (2014), pp.144–61. See, A. Buğra and O. Savaşkan, ‘Politics and Class: Turkish Business Environment in the Neoliberal Age’, New Perspectives on Turkey Vol.46 (2012), pp.27–63. See, E. Hoşgör, ‘Islamic Capital/Anatolian Tigers: Past and Present’, Middle Eastern Studies Vol.47, No.2 (2011), pp.343–60.
16. https://www.csgb.gov.tr/media/3095/2016_02.pdf, accessed on 8 September 2016.
17. B. Duran and E. Yıldırım, ‘Islamism, Trade Unionism and Civil Society: The Case of Hak-İş Labour Confederation in Turkey’, Middle Eastern Studies Vol.41, No.2 (2005), pp.227–47.
18. For some examples of this close relationship between Islamist political parties and Hak-İş, one can just note how old presidents of Hak-İş obtained very high posts in these parties, including Minister of Labour and Social Security (Necati Çelik), administrative head of the Turkish Grand National Assembly (Salim Uslu), and vice-president of the Turkish Grand National Assembly (Yasin Hatipoğlu). One can also note how Recep Tayyip Erdoğan attended and gave talks at many Hak-İş congresses and events. In one of those speeches, he even praised contributions of Hak-İş to dawa throughout its history. See http://www.haberturk.com/ekonomi/is-yasam/haber/1143455-erdogan-Hak-İş-olagan-genel-kurulunda-konusuyor, accessed on 10 September 2016.
19. Another important work that discusses Islamists’ interaction with class and trade unionism is Alexander, ‘Opportunities, Organizations, And Ideas’. Alexander argues that Islamists’ efforts to manipulate trade unions along the lines of their own political agendas have been unsuccessful in both countries. From a comparative perspective, one can claim that Turkish Islamists have been more successful in trade unionism since they took economic policies towards their members more seriously. I discuss new practices that Hak-İş leaders developed in the third and fourth parts of this article.
20. Buğra, ‘Class, Culture and State’; A. Buğra, ‘Labour, capital and religion: harmony and conflict among the constituency of political Islam in Turkey’, Middle Eastern Studies Vol.38, No.2 (2002). Another important work on Hak-İş that deserves special mention is Duran and Yıldırım's work from 2005. Their main focus, however, is on explaining how Hak-İş emerged as a democratic civil society organization. Given that Hak-İş has widely harmonized its discourse with the discourse of AKP during the last decade, it may be argued that Duran and Yıldırım overstated the level of ideational transformation Hak-İş experienced in the 1990s. See, Duran and Yıldırım, ‘Islamism, Trade Unionism and Civil Society’.
21. Buğra, ‘Labour capital and religion’, p.200.
22. Some recent examples from Turkey are: http://www.ogghaberlerii.com/haber/16351/Hak-İş-bagli-celik-is-sendikasi-hak-arayan-isciler-saladirdi/, accessed on 8 September 201; http://www.enerjimagazin.com/haber-858-TES-IS-Protesto-Edildi.html, accessed on 8 September 2016; http://www.bbc.com/turkce/haberler/2015/05/150514_bursa_renault_metal_iscileri, accessed on 8 September 2016.
23. Alexander, ‘Opportunities, Organizations, and Ideas’.
24. R. Abdelal, Y. M. Herrera, A. I. Johnston, and R. McDermott, ‘Identity as a Variable’, in Measuring Identity: A Guide for Social Scientists edited by R. Abdelal, Y. M. Herrera, A. I. Johnston, and R. McDermott (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp.17–33; E. Laclau and C. Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (London: Verso Books, 1985) , pp.93–148.
25. J. Glynos, ‘The Grip of Ideology: A Lacanian Approach to the Theory of Ideology’, Journal of Political Ideologies Vol. 6, No.2 (2001), pp.191–214; S. Žižek, The Sublime Object of Ideology (London: Verso Books, 1989), p.139, 184. Various types of emotions can be simultaneously embedded within an identity, some of which are resentment, hatred, guilt and desire. Avoiding the pitfall of reifying types of emotions, I focus on affect as the broader notion grasping bodily processes of attachments.
26. It has been shown that affects can be aroused in different ways. Albertson and Gadarian talk about the role of images in evoking affects, for example. See, B. Albertson and S. K. Gadarian, Anxious Politics: Democratic Citizenship in a Threatening World (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2015), p.39. However, given that I study written discourse, a focus on fantasmatic narratives seem reasonable.
27. In psychoanalytical theory, fantasies promise ‘fullness’ to the subject, who suffers from the contingencies of the daily life. Y. Stavrakakis, Lacan and the Political (London: Routledge, 1999), p.82.
28. J. Glynos and D. R. Howarth, Logics of Critical Explanation in Social Research (Oxon, UK: Routledge Press, 2007), p.150.
29. Duran and Yıldırım, ‘Islamism, Trade Unionism and Civil Society’, p.232.
30. Hak-İş Journal (Ankara: Hak-İş Press, January 1986), p.16.
31. Ibid., p.52.
32. For a more elaborate study on the concept of fantasies of social cohesion, see J. Dobbernack, ‘Things Fall Apart: Social Imaginaries, and the Politics of Cohesion’, Critical Policy Studies Vol.4, No.2 (2000), pp.146–63. These ideologies have similarities with ideologies of Catholic trade unions in interwar period. See, R. Hyman, Understanding European Trade Unionism: Between Market, Class and Society (London: SAGE Publication, 2001) p.40.
33. Hak-İş Journal (Ankara: Hak-İş Press, September 1991), p.5.
34. Hak-İş, Activity Report (Ankara: Hak-İş Press, 2011), p.64.
35. Hak-İş Journal (Ankara: Hak-İş Press, September 1992), p.2.
36. In his discussion of the construction of masculine identity by G. W. Bush, Connolly describes this process as ‘unsung melody’, in which the message is expressed without being articulated. See W. E. Connolly, Capitalism and Christianity, American Style (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008), p.55.
37. Hak-İş Journal (Ankara: Hak-İş Press, December 1996), p.4.
38. Hak-İş Activity Report (Ankara: Hak-İş Press, 2011), p.12.
39. Hak-İş Journal (Ankara: Hak-İş Press, October 2012), Cover Page.
40. The first resolution was: ‘A need for renaissance forming the principles of renewal in trade union movement is needed’. Hak-İş Activity Report (Ankara: Hak-İş Press, 2011), p.14.
41. Hak-İş Journal (Ankara: Hak-İş Press, April 1986), p.1.
42. Glynos and Howarth, Logics, p.107.
43. Duran and Yıldırım, ‘Islamism, Trade Unionism and Civil Society’, p.233; Mahirogullari, ‘Trade Union Political Party Relations’, p.20.
44. Y. Koç, The Turkish Worker Class and the History of Trade Unionism [in Turkish] (Istanbul: Kaynak Yayinlari, 2003), p.105; Mahirogullari, ‘Trade Union Political Party Relations’, p.18.
45. Hak-İş Journal (Ankara: Hak-İş Press, March 1990), p.32.
46. Mahirogullari, ‘Trade Union Political Party Relations’, p.20.
47. Hak-İş Journal (Ankara: Hak-İş Press, April 1992), p.78.
48. Hak-İş Journal (Ankara: Hak-İş Press, March 1989), p.32.
49. Hak-İş Journal (Ankara: Hak-İş Press, April 1992), p.40.
50. There are varying explanations of the political turn of Hak-İş. According to Duran and Yıldırım, the nature of this political turn is the moderation and democratization of an Islamist movement in an economic and political context. According to Buğra, the new position of Hak-İş reflected its class interests. In addition to both of these, I believe, a political turn was also part of the effort to protect the anti-class identity of Hak-İş.
51. Hak-İş Journal (Ankara: Hak-İş Press, October 1993), p.32.
52. H. Odabaşı, ‘Okay, but, against whom will the strike be now?’ [in Turkish], retrieved from http://www.aksiyon.com.tr/aksiyon/haber-5097-35-iyi-de-grev-kime-karsi-yapilacak.html, (22 May 1999). Accessed on 4 September 2014.
53. Hak-İş Journal (Ankara: Hak-İş Press, November 1995), p.38.
54. H. Sarfati, ‘Coping with the Unemployment Crisis in Europe’, International Labour Review Vol.152, No.1 (2013), p.147.
55. Hak-İş Journal (Ankara: Hak-İş Press, May 1996), 4; Hak-İş Activity Report (Ankara: Hak-İş Press, 2003), p.23. Actually, the ‘social dialogue’ proposal of the European Union fitted so well to the fantasmatic searches of Hak-İş that some authors claim that the pro-European stance that Hak-İş had in the last decade was due to the fit with the understating of industrial relations See, E. Yıldırım, Ş. Çalış and A. Benli. ‘Turkish Labour Confederations and Turkey's Membership of the European Union’, Economic and Industrial Democracy Vol.29 (2008), pp.362–79.
56. K. Ağartan, ‘Turkey's Accession to the European Union and the Turkish Labor Movement’, European Journal of Turkish Studies Vol.11 (2010), pp.1–47.
57. Hak-İş, Activity Report (Ankara: Hak-İş Press, 2007), p.122. Hak-İş, 12th Ordinary Congress Resolutions (Ankara: Hak-İş Press, 2011).
58. Hak-İş, Activity Report (Ankara: Hak-İş Press, 2007), p.80.
59. Ibid., p.125.
60. Hak-İş (Ankara: Hak-İş Press, 2011b), p.29.
61. C. Tuğal, Passive Revolution: Absorbing the Islamic Challenge to Capitalism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009).
62. http://www.internethaber.com/gezi-parki-protestolarina-sendikalardan-ortak-aciklama-544029h.htm, accessed on 11 September 2016.
63. http://www.sabah.com.tr/secim/2015/05/27/100-stkdan-milli-iradeye-tam-destek, accessed on 11 September 2016.
64. http://www.hakis.org.tr/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1173:tuerkye-anayasa-platformu-toplandi&catid=11:haber&Itemid=10, accessed on 11 September 2016.
65. Hak-İş, Activity Report (Ankara: Hak-İş Press, 2011), p.46.
66. N. F. Onar, ‘Echoes of a Universalism Lost: Rival Representations of the Ottomans in Today's Turkey’, Middle Eastern Studies Vol.45, No.2 (2009), pp.229–41.
67. I. Erdinç, ‘The Reconstruction of the Trade Union Field under the AKP Rule and the Bipolarization Process: Hak-İş, Memur-Sen and the Others’ [in Turkish], Çalışma ve Toplum Vol.2 (2014), pp.155–74.
68. http://www.oztasimais.org/index.php/component/k2/item/230-ankara-bueyueksehir-iscileri-Hak-İş-dedi, accessed on 10 September 2016.
69. http://www.birgun.net/haber-detay/simdi-de-Hak-İş-mucizesi-mi-85862.html, accessed on 10 September 2016.
70. http://www.milliyet.com.tr/hak-is-ve-hizmet-is-genel-baskani-arslan-ankara-yerelhaber-1592165/, accessed on 10 December 2017.
71. C. Tuğal, ‘Islamism in Turkey’, pp.85–111.
72. C. Tuğal, ‘Passive Revolution’, p.8.
73. See, B. U. Utvik, ‘Islamists from a Distance’, International Journal of Middle East Studies Vol.43 (2011), pp.141–3.